Individual Differences in Reproductive Strategy are Related to Views about Recreational Drug Use in Belgium, The Netherlands, and Japan

Abstract

Individual differences in moral views are often explained as the downstream effect of ideological commitments, such as political orientation and religiosity. Recent studies in the U.S. suggest that moral views about recreational drug use are also influenced by attitudes toward sex and that this relationship cannot be explained by ideological commitments. In this study, we investigate student samples from Belgium, The Netherlands, and Japan. We find that, in all samples, sexual attitudes are strongly related to views about recreational drug use, even after controlling for various ideological variables. We discuss our results in light of reproductive strategies as determinants of moral views.

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Acknowledgments

KQ conducted this study as a PhD fellow of the Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO)-Vlaanderen (Research Foundation Flanders). She would like to express her gratitude to everyone who helped her recruiting participants—in particular, Wim Ghijsen, Annemie Ploeger, Peter Derkx, and many Dutch study organizations. KI would like to thank Kunihiro Yokota for his help in collecting data. We thank Dr. Sena Koleva and the anonymous reviewers for comments on this manuscript.

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